1. Technical Field
The present invention is directed to an apparatus and method of managing HTML documents. More specifically, the present invention is directed to an apparatus and method of highlighting links in a Web page when the links are not easily recognizable as such.
2. Description of Related Art
The Internet or the World Wide Web (WWW) has become a very convenient and inexpensive resource for finding information about nearly every subject imaginable. Users can shop for merchandise, get stock quotes, tune into radio programs, chat with other users and engage in a host of other activities. The ever-increasing use of the Internet has been facilitated by the widespread availability of computer programs called Web browsers. A Web browser is a program that is used for establishing communication between two computers on a network using the hypertext transfer protocol (HTTP).
In a typical transaction, a Web browser transmits a request to download a document indicated by an address called a uniform resource locator (URL). The download request is routed through the Web until it reaches a Web server indicated by the URL. The Web server responds to the request by transmitting the indicated document, commonly called a “Web page,” back to the requesting computer.
Web pages are usually written using the hypertext mark up language (HTML) and often include links to other objects such as documents, images etc. Links are references to documents from within other documents. Links allow a user to easily jump from one document or Web page to another with just a click of a mouse. Thus, a link is a very useful Internet navigational tool.
Generally, links are displayed in a fashion that allows users to identify them as such. For example, a link may be underlined or may be in a different color than the rest of the text within which it is embedded or both. Although links are ordinarily presented in an identifiable fashion, sometimes it may not be very easy for a user to so identify the links. For instance, when the color used to display a link is the same or very close to the background color of a screen on which the Web page is displayed, a user may not be able to identify the link as such. Furthermore, users have often times mistaken an underlined phrase as a link.
Thus, what is needed is an apparatus and method of identifying a link as such when needed.